10 years after it was pulled from Superfund list, Meadowlands pollution site to be studied

The Hackensack River in August 2012. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Wednesday it has reached an agreement with several companies to conduct a study of pollution on a heavily-contaminated industrial site in Kearny, along the river.Andrew Miller/The Jersey Journal

KEARNY — A decade after the McGreevey administration stopped a highly polluted industrial site in the Meadowlands from being added to the federal Superfund list — against the advice of its own scientists — the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said yesterday it had reached an agreement to study the contamination.

The agreement is a major step toward permanently cleaning up the 25-acre tract, part of a much larger peninsula that bends into the Hackensack River near Kearny's border with Secaucus. The property, which was eventually added to the National Priority list in 2007, has long been sought for redevelopment.

The land, known as the Standard Chlorine Chemical site, had been used by the manufacturing industry for nine decades, until the 1990s. Mothballs and deodorizers, among other things, were produced there, leaving behind PCPs, chromium, dioxin and other dangerous pollutants.

"This agreement marks an important step in the cleanup of the Standard Chlorine Chemical site," EPA Regional Administrator Judith Enck said in a statement. "Today's agreement illustrates how the Superfund law works to make polluters, not taxpayers, pay to clean up sites like this one."

The study of potential cleanup methods will cost about $750,000, the EPA said. The companies — Apogent Transition Corp., Beazer East, Cooper Industries and Occidental Chemical Corp. — are also expected to pay for the cost of the agency's oversight.

"It's long overdue," said Jeff Tittel, the director of the Sierra Club in New Jersey. "The fact that this site is one of the most complex and dirty sites we have — not only in New Jersey but in the country — it's important to finally get a study and a plan in place to clean it up."

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The Standard Chlorine site had been the subject of controversy among environmental officials. In October 2003, tempers flared at the state Department of Environmental Protection when then-commissioner Bradley Campbell pulled the site back from Superfund list consideration at the last minute because developers complained federal bureaucracy would prevent them from building there. Campbell said he believed he could get it cleaned up faster than the federal government could.

But staff scientists were not pleased, The Star-Ledger reported in December 2005, citing e-mails.

"I soundly second this assessment of the FRUSTRATION and feelings of being stabbed in the back for having an environmentally ethical conscience," geologist Linda Welkom wrote in an e-mail to research scientist Steven Byrnes. "It is a sad, pathetic legacy that DEP management will leave."

Developers never made much progress on the site and, in 2007, federal officials asked New Jersey to reconsider its position. State environmental officials, then working for Gov. Jon Corzine, agreed.

Since then, several contaminated buildings were demolished on the site, and two lagoons were emptied of water, filled with clean material and covered. A wall was installed to keep further contamination from flowing into the river. In addition, pumps are being used to bring polluted ground water to the surface to be cleaned.